Hello Maintankadinsmy char is Puredarkness on EU Dreanor Horde, Guild PsychosisCurrently im having issues with my guild and my wanting of dps plate gear with haste/mastery on it.Unfortunatly none of my guilds hav ever rolled a prot pally and think they know better than me.Our guild is currently only raiding ToT normal as we are not a hard core guild. my guildies keep telling me there is no need for the haste build unless doing heroic mode and in fact they are trying to say there is no added benefit from haste build over avoidance in normal mode. My guildies hav also tried to say that the new vengeance cap is gonna make a haste build useless and the new 5.4 patch notes with the SS changed to HS will make haste even more useless.I use a haste build as it makes me much more survivable and i hate relying on avoidance RNG. I dont think my guildies realise just how much my haste build helps as in some fights im top dps and doing nearly same as healers in healing.Wat i want to ask is,1,Is there any current or known future raids where avoidance is gonna beat haste/mastery?2,Does heroic / normal make a difference to the viability of a build?3,Does the new Holy Shield instead of Sacred Shield make haste build any less viable as a build?4,With the new talent Holy Shield is avoidance catching up on haste build or is avoidance any better as a build?5,Will 5.4 bring anymore suprises for protadins?

Ty in advance for answers. I hope i hav posted in the right place, this is more of a gear / build question but i know there are off topic questions in my post about 5.4 changes. Mainly im sick of discussing this issue with my guild and having to pass on current BiS gear for dps to get it. I ask these questions in the hope that better tankadins than me can help me understand the benefits of haste build and explain the added benefits of haste build over avoidance for t14 and the upcoming 5.4.

1) No.2) No.3) No.4) Holy Shield is/was what the current SS talent is. If anything, it wouldn't make a difference.5) No one knows yet, we're only a week into PTR.

If your raid group isn't down with you having haste/mastery gear for tanking, then they are seriously gimping themselves. The major benefits of going that route is that you do more damage, and you have a higher uptime on Shield of the Righteous. What this means is that when you do more damage the raid can get by with doing less (or the boss will just die faster in general!), you can also take less damage overall.

There's no reason to take avoidance gear over "dps" stat gear for a prot paladin. The vengeance change will do nothing for either, other than making it so that people don't try to "game the system" and do things they probably shouldn't be doing to inflate their vengeance to levels unwanted. Tell your raid, that unless 5.4 removes Sanctity of Battle from Prot Paladin... you want haste. If anything, point out how other tanks (DK's and Warriors) who use avoidance stats are getting Riposte to increase their crit when tanking.

Puredarkness wrote:1,Is there any current or known future raids where avoidance is gonna beat haste/mastery?2,Does heroic / normal make a difference to the viability of a build?3,Does the new Holy Shield instead of Sacred Shield make haste build any less viable as a build?4,With the new talent Holy Shield is avoidance catching up on haste build or is avoidance any better as a build?5,Will 5.4 bring anymore suprises for protadins?

1. No current raid. Too early to tell on future, but so far No.

2. To some extent yes, however for your average protection paladin with adequate gear for the content they are going up against haste > stam for most/all of the current content for both 10/25 normal and heroic. Increased SS absorbs, SoI healing, Holy Power Generation, RPPM procs (trinket/meta/weapon) AND DPS... That's a whole lot of bang from just one stat.

3. It wouldn't have, but the change has been reversed. Current Sacred Shield was going to become Holy Shield for prot anyway so.... yeah. The only thing this change would have done for us is give us one extra small cd or situational healing.

4. See above.

5. See second part of answer 1.

No offense but your guildies are extremely uninformed. Ignorance is bliss!

Give this a read, it might be able to help you convince them... or just point them to it, although from the sound of it they probably wont bother.

■Stamina is still your best survivability stat, haste is a reasonably close second, mastery a distant third, dodge and parry tied for an even more distant fourth.

■Capping hit (7.5%) and expertise (15%) are still your most important secondary stat goals (i.e. Control comes before Haste). It’s not clear from the data whether stamina is better or worse than hit and expertise – my guess is that stamina is better, but it should rarely come up in practice since you can’t reforge into stamina anyway.

■Control/Haste should be the default gearing strategy for pretty much everyone nowadays, augmented by as much stamina as you need to feel comfortable in the encounter. Rule of thumb: if you keep going splat, pick up some more stamina.

To be honest, I pass on the dps pieces first to the classes that actually use a haste/mastery piece...IE: dks. Most fights are a dps check and unforutnately, you can't meet the dps checks if dps is undergeared but you can survive if the tank is undergeared with proper cd management...especially a tankadin.

So if anything...pick it up as an 'offspec item' and just use it as a main spec thing. Warriors shouldn't be touching haste pieces anyway so it should be easy items after a DK.

Basically to put any arguements to bed for my guilds sake i am opting to only take the dps kit when our resident dps DK doesnt need the item, while its annoying some ppl are just unwilling to listen to my pleas for my BiS gear its a choice i take for the guilds sake. I just wish ppl would realise that haste/mastery gear is not just dps gear anymore and current mechanics and stat weights allow for prot pally's to utilize the haste as BiS. if maybe ppl had of listened to my complaints earlier this arguement wouldnt hav been dragged out. just hate the ignorance of some ppl when they say "dps gear is for dps players" they need to realise this gear is not just for dps (dk's) anymore and its now a protadins BiS. a better arguement for Dk's getting the gear is its there only option but pallies can double dip so to speak and take avoidance and reforge and gem to haste and wait to get the gear another day. anyways TY all for the in put and answering my questions i really appreciate it and it has helped me =)

fuzzygeek wrote:Gearing out a tank effectively has far more of an impact on a raid and its ability to progress than gearing one out of five or six DPS in the raid.

1) This is no longer really true. Fights rarely end nowadays because the tank falls dead due to bad gear. Sure, if your tank is undergeared in comparison to the rest of the raid, you might want to funnel him a few pieces to keep up, but if your tank is anywhere decently geared, he'll do just fine. Pushing DPS to make berserk timers, as well as burst down specific adds is often much more important nowadays.

2) Even if it was true, your tank can pick up avoidance gear and still get the full stamina and armor from it. Sure, it's less haste, and avoidance is less useful to us than haste is, but it's still far from complete rubbish.

So yeah, for the advantage of the guild, it's still wise to pass on Haste gear for the plate DPS, and only take it after they got it.

PS. Avoidance actually has synergy with Sacred Shield. Every time you avoid an attack, the shield remains to absorb the next hit. However, since that means you just avoided a hit entirely, it means you're not really at a risk of dying anyhow, so it's synergy where you least need it.

I don't understand why anyone would pass haste "DPS" pieces that are perfectly itemized for tanking. Haste/Mastery, Haste/Hit, Haste/Expertise, etc. The reason it makes so little sense is....the so called "DPS" specs/classes do less DPS than me on nearly every single fight. The raid almost always gains higher DPS by giving me the haste piece than it would giving it to a DK or Ret. So baffling why people still think giving it to the DPS is going to result in higher raid DPS than giving it to the Tank.

It's not just about personal DPS. If you only care about those pixels, I don't know if you're playing for the proper reasons in a guild that's progressing. Just because you're higher on DPS does not equate to you automatically getting a piece of loot. Tanks can survive with suboptimal gear with optimal play. DPS cannot do optimal DPS if their gear is suboptimal. So you can gain more of a benefit guild wise by giving it to the DPS first (but it sucks, trust me).

Just because the so called 'DPS' are doing less DPS than you, means nothing. Some of them might be doing other mechanics or dodging something that you don't necessarily have to worry about and on top of that, you generally get to be on the boss full time. You also need to remember that Vengeance (that wonderful ability that allows you to do DPS) is getting nerfed come 5.4. So no more /sit spamming, no more standing in fire or whatever else you did to try to max it out.

Fenrìr wrote:It's not just about personal DPS. If you only care about those pixels, I don't know if you're playing for the proper reasons in a guild that's progressing. Just because you're higher on DPS does not equate to you automatically getting a piece of loot. Tanks can survive with suboptimal gear with optimal play. DPS cannot do optimal DPS if their gear is suboptimal. So you can gain more of a benefit guild wise by giving it to the DPS first (but it sucks, trust me).

Just because the so called 'DPS' are doing less DPS than you, means nothing. Some of them might be doing other mechanics or dodging something that you don't necessarily have to worry about and on top of that, you generally get to be on the boss full time. You also need to remember that Vengeance (that wonderful ability that allows you to do DPS) is getting nerfed come 5.4. So no more /sit spamming, no more standing in fire or whatever else you did to try to max it out.

There's more to a raid than just you.

I think you're confused. Raid DPS is Raid DPS. It is irrelevant where the DPS comes from. Since haste scales DPS pretty linearly, if you take 200k DPS from a tank vs 150k DPS from a DPS....add some haste.... the net result is higher raid DPS when the same upgrade is given to the tank compared to the DPS.

"DPS cannot do optimal DPS if their gear is suboptimal?" What does that even mean? Tanks can't do optimal DPS if their gear is suboptimal either......

Them having to dodge stuff, me being on the boss full time, and them doing less DPS than me are all EXCELLENT reasons that giving me an equivalent upgrade is a stronger Raid DPS increase than giving it to them. I raid 25 Heroics, never sit spam (that's just a little excessive), and if Vengeance only gets tuned down to the numbers they're already talking about (50% max hp), then it will be a non-issue.

If Vengeance does see a big nerf, then DPS getting gear might be a better increase than a Tank getting it. However, currently that's not the case and I don't know how you could possibly argue that it is.

The argument is that even if an item is perfectly itemized (haste/mast|hit|xpt), it should be passed to plate dps first since tanks have "other options" -- we can make use of dodge/parry pieces, whilst dps can not. This is a perfectly legitimate argument, and if Pure's guild made that argument I'd not think they were a blazing pile of wankers.

And in our case, it's not just about our hopped-up-on-vengeance RDPS contribution -- but also our contributions to RHPS as well, which is a nontrivial amount.

If the tank is always beating DPS on non-lol1tankstupidpaladintricks fights, then honestly your DPS needs to take a hard look at what they're doing. While our DPS can and should be competitive, you shouldn't be winning all the meters all the time.

fuzzygeek wrote:The argument is that even if an item is perfectly itemized (haste/mast|hit|xpt), it should be passed to plate dps first since tanks have "other options" -- we can make use of dodge/parry pieces, whilst dps can not. This is a perfectly legitimate argument, and if Pure's guild made that argument I'd not think they were a blazing pile of wankers.

And in our case, it's not just about our hopped-up-on-vengeance RDPS contribution -- but also our contributions to RHPS as well, which is a nontrivial amount.

If the tank is always beating DPS on non-lol1tankstupidpaladintricks fights, then honestly your DPS needs to take a hard look at what they're doing. While our DPS can and should be competitive, you shouldn't be winning all the meters all the time.

Dodge/parry are awful for us. Their other options (crit/mast|hit|xpt) are much much better than our "other options." It's not that I win *every* fight, but I'd say more fights than not.

Jin - Competitive but not topHor - TopCouncil - TopTortos - Depends on strat, but always top on Tortos dmgMeg - Not usually #1, but always competitiveJikun - Sometimes #1, sometimes just competitiveDuru - TopPrimor - Depends on strat, but Top/competitiveAnimus - Top (sometimes just competitive)Qon - TopTwin - Depends on flame handling, but usually competitiveLei Shen - Top

Brokenone wrote:I think you're confused. Raid DPS is Raid DPS. It is irrelevant where the DPS comes from. Since haste scales DPS pretty linearly, if you take 200k DPS from a tank vs 150k DPS from a DPS....add some haste.... the net result is higher raid DPS when the same upgrade is given to the tank compared to the DPS.

"DPS cannot do optimal DPS if their gear is suboptimal?" What does that even mean? Tanks can't do optimal DPS if their gear is suboptimal either......

Them having to dodge stuff, me being on the boss full time, and them doing less DPS than me are all EXCELLENT reasons that giving me an equivalent upgrade is a stronger Raid DPS increase than giving it to them. I raid 25 Heroics, never sit spam (that's just a little excessive), and if Vengeance only gets tuned down to the numbers they're already talking about (50% max hp), then it will be a non-issue.

If Vengeance does see a big nerf, then DPS getting gear might be a better increase than a Tank getting it. However, currently that's not the case and I don't know how you could possibly argue that it is.

I think you're confused. I know what raid dps is...it's an avg of all the dps added together. There is much more to a boss fight than just DPS'ing your pure little pathetic, pixel loving heart out just to parse on World of Logs...that also equates to adds dying, boss dying and people staying alive. I'll say that last part again...people staying alive. You, as a tank, can stay alive with suboptimal gear as well as do your job as a tank effectively...a DPS cannot. There are very few fights in this current tier that a DPS does not have to switch to an add that the tank can ignore and having less gear means lowering overall raid dps because they all (5-7 of them) have to spend more time on that add just because you have the assumption that your dps is the only thing that matters. A DPS's job in a raid is JUST as important as yours...and again, we're back to that thing I've been saying...they cannot do it with suboptimal gear. You cannot solo DPS a boss down, their adds and heal yourself. Just because they have to dodge abilities, get on adds, is NOT an excellent reason for you to get that piece over them.

I'm an old-fashioned tank. I know that tank dps has it's place. However, you're first and foremost job is to survive. If that means taking a 522 dodge/parry piece so your DPS can get a 522 piece to replace a 496 over you're 502...then so be it. You can still stand there and eat that boss's abilities with that 502 piece and your DPS can do better DPS to kill that boss and their adds faster.

Trust me, we are all very...VERY...much aware of how much dodge/parry sucks for us. But it's not something that is totally ignorable. It's been that way since this Expac launched and many of us knew it in PTR. BUT, it still has it's place as a minor filler.

Jin - Competitive but not topHor - TopCouncil - TopTortos - Depends on strat, but always top on Tortos dmgMeg - Not usually #1, but always competitiveJikun - Sometimes #1, sometimes just competitiveDuru - TopPrimor - Depends on strat, but Top/competitiveAnimus - Top (sometimes just competitive)Qon - TopTwin - Depends on flame handling, but usually competitiveLei Shen - Top

Jin - Gratz...standing in water with some vengeanceHor - Gratz...solo tanking the boss means you get full up time on high vengeance stacks while your dps kill adds to further the fight.Council - gratz...multiple mobs hitting you with good vengeance while your dps focus a single mob to further the fightTortos - depending on strat, gratz...you're either solo tanking with a lot of adds AND boss while your dps focus on adds to further the fight, or you're either on add duty in which isn't much different or boss duty in which...guess what...your DPS are on add duty.Meg - /shrug...your dps need to be better and you need to stop standing in fireji'kun - gratz...you generally get a feather and have a high vengeance number while your dps fly around killing adds to further the fightDuru - Gratz...you're solo tanking while your DPS are killing adds to further the fightPrimo - Gratz...you can get mutitated and do good dps due to vengeanceAnimus - gratz...tank vengeance is fucking stupid here....Qon - Gratz...again...solo tanking...Twins - /shrug...your dps needs to be better and you probably need to stop standing in fire.Lei Shen - gratz, you can eat decaps in melee range and /sit spam to have insane vengeance levels.

The common thing I'm seeing here...is your DPS is on adds ~*~to further the fight so you can progress~*~ and you're finding ways to make your vengeance levels higher...at the expense of healer mana; because guess what...that's what it takes to make up for your higher vengeance. To me, it doesn't seem like you're much of a team player.

You seem to have quite the insightful knowledge about how a tank's dps is the only thing that matters in a raid environment...so let's see your armory for your Ra-den achievement...here's mine: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/v ... r/advanced . I can 100% promise you, we did not get it just because of my dps alone...it's a collective working achievement amongst all raid members.

I think you're confused. I know what raid dps is...it's an avg of all the dps added together. There is much more to a boss fight than just DPS'ing your pure little pathetic, pixel loving heart out just to parse on World of Logs...

that also equates to adds dying, boss dying and people staying alive. I'll say that last part again...people staying alive. You, as a tank, can stay alive with suboptimal gear as well as do your job as a tank effectively...a DPS cannot.

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More gear makes me do my job better. More gear makes a DPS do their job better. The more dodge/parry and less haste I have the spikier my damage will be. Spikes kill tanks. A DPS does the same job regardless of gear level it isn't a binary thing. There is a point where your tanks being undergeared gets them killed. There is also a point where DPS don't have enough gear to ensure adds die promptly or to meet enrage timers.

There are very few fights in this current tier that a DPS does not have to switch to an add that the tank can ignore and having less gear means lowering overall raid dps because they all (5-7 of them) have to spend more time on that add just because you have the assumption that your dps is the only thing that matters.

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Again, I'm not sure where you get this about "my assumption that my dps is the only things that matters." No need to resort to personal attacks when trying to make a point. Again, your argument here doesn't really make sense. Time spent DPS'ing things is irrelevant if you can meet the "DPS checks" of encounters.

A DPS's job in a raid is JUST as important as yours...and again, we're back to that thing I've been saying...they cannot do it with suboptimal gear. You cannot solo DPS a boss down, their adds and heal yourself. Just because they have to dodge abilities, get on adds, is NOT an excellent reason for you to get that piece over them.

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They can do DPS with suboptimal gear. Just as I can tank with suboptimal gear. I'm not sure where you're getting this from. The reason to give gear out is simple:

1) Increase raid DPS2) Increase survivability

Both of those are increased more for the raid when you give an equivalent gear upgrade to a tank rather than a DPS.

I'm an old-fashioned tank. I know that tank dps has it's place. However, you're first and foremost job is to survive. If that means taking a 522 dodge/parry piece so your DPS can get a 522 piece to replace a 496 over you're 502...then so be it. You can still stand there and eat that boss's abilities with that 502 piece and your DPS can do better DPS to kill that boss and their adds faster.

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I'm not sure what being an old-fashioned tank has to do with anything, but if you are "old fashioned" then surely you know almost every guild in every tier since the inception of WoW has given gear to their tanks first? Tank survival is the number one thing that has to happen to kill a boss. Also, throughout this argument I have been quite clear and specified "equal upgrades" so I'm not sure why you're using an unequal upgrade as an example. If they gain an extra 6 ilvls on an upgrade than a tank would, it's quite possible that would result in more raid DPS.

Trust me, we are all very...VERY...much aware of how much dodge/parry sucks for us. But it's not something that is totally ignorable. It's been that way since this Expac launched and many of us knew it in PTR. BUT, it still has it's place as a minor filler.

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It is something that is totally ignorable. There is literally ZERO reason to have any dodge/parry gear. In EVERY case haste/hit/expertise/mastery are superior. EVERY CASE. If I could get zero dodge/parry on gear I would, and I'd more optimally geared if I was able to do so. It provides more survivability than crit. That's the only stat you *might* consider to be worse than dodge/parry.

Jin - Competitive but not topHor - TopCouncil - TopTortos - Depends on strat, but always top on Tortos dmgMeg - Not usually #1, but always competitiveJikun - Sometimes #1, sometimes just competitiveDuru - TopPrimor - Depends on strat, but Top/competitiveAnimus - Top (sometimes just competitive)Qon - TopTwin - Depends on flame handling, but usually competitiveLei Shen - Top

Jin - Gratz...standing in water with some vengeanceHor - Gratz...solo tanking the boss means you get full up time on high vengeance stacks while your dps kill adds to further the fight.Council - gratz...multiple mobs hitting you with good vengeance while your dps focus a single mob to further the fightTortos - depending on strat, gratz...you're either solo tanking with a lot of adds AND boss while your dps focus on adds to further the fight, or you're either on add duty in which isn't much different or boss duty in which...guess what...your DPS are on add duty.Meg - /shrug...your dps need to be better and you need to stop standing in fireji'kun - gratz...you generally get a feather and have a high vengeance number while your dps fly around killing adds to further the fightDuru - Gratz...you're solo tanking while your DPS are killing adds to further the fightPrimo - Gratz...you can get mutitated and do good dps due to vengeanceAnimus - gratz...tank vengeance is fucking stupid here....Qon - Gratz...again...solo tanking...Twins - /shrug...your dps needs to be better and you probably need to stop standing in fire.Lei Shen - gratz, you can eat decaps in melee range and /sit spam to have insane vengeance levels.

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I already told you I don't spam sit. That's a waste of time if you can already meet the DPS check, and riskier than necessary. Tortos I tank the boss, and we kite the adds (more typical in a 25 man setting). There are many DPS that also just stay on the boss. I do more DPS than all of them. You don't need to stand in fire on Megera to do competitive DPS. On Council I focus the same add that the DPS do. How is that not "furthering the fight?" I just do more damage to it than them. Ji'kun I have to go to other platforms to tank the guardians. How is that different from DPS? Durumu, I can DPS adds and icewalls just like DPS can. Primo...how is that a bad thing? Twins, don't need to stand in fire to do competitive damage. You're living in a 10 man world.

The common thing I'm seeing here...is your DPS is on adds [u][b]~*~to further the fight so you can progress~*~[/b][/u] and you're finding ways to make your vengeance levels higher...at the expense of healer mana; because guess what...that's what it takes to make up for your higher vengeance. To me, it doesn't seem like you're much of a team player.

[/quote

The common thing I'm seeing here is you resorting to personal attacks without knowing anything about my playstyle or strategies. I DPS adds ~*~to further the fight so you can progress~*~ just like DPS do on most fights. I never cheese vengeance at the expense of healer mana, only if it makes sense (such as with CD's up) or during a burn phase of the fight where the DPS check is critical and my DPS matters (again, just as much as anyone's DPS). Not sure why you'd say I'm not a "Team Player" since again, you have no idea about anything I do other than that I think an equivalent upgrade should go to a Tank over a DPS (...and again this is a view espoused by nearly every top end guild since the beginning of WoW).

You seem to have quite the insightful knowledge about how a tank's dps is the only thing that matters in a raid environment...so let's see your armory for your Ra-den achievement...here's mine: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/velen/Vanagandrr/advanced . I can 100% promise you, we did not get it just because of my dps alone...it's a collective working achievement amongst all raid members.

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I'm sorry I can't link my Ra-Den achievement. We're working on Heroic Lei Shen at the moment. Let me reiterate ONE MORE TIME that I never said tank dps is the only thing that matters. I said raid DPS gets a larger increase when a tank gets an equivalent upgrade over a DPS getting it on most fights. Anyway, sorry you felt the need to personally attack me. You must really be angry that I have a different opinion...

I have a problem with people who appear to only care about themselves and can't seem to grasp the concept that people care about their fellow guildmates and it's a far cry from me having a different opinion from you...it's the overly accepted view of almost every tank here. Sure, there are those people who care about tank dps...AFTER DPS's dps. Because again, we're back to the point of a tank can do their job in suboptimal gear as has been the case since what...T12? T11?.

Yes...you can do your job better with better gear...but so can a DPS and so can a healer. If you took offense or thought anything I said was a personal attack against you, then it must be true. But everything I said, can easily be applied to any single elitist tank who thinks that their dps is the sole reason for gear justification and while I did say 'you' quite a bit, it was not necessarily directed at you, even though you and I are having this conversation.

A tank getting gear over a DPS sort of stopped as Cata progressed. Sure, there was a time in which tanks and healers were the top two priorities on gear for tier pieces. Your main tank got geared out first over your off tank and your healers got the tier over the dps after the tanks because that was the time that gear did matter for a tank and you did not progress if you did not have a geared tank to stand up there and get beat on. I played a dps in Vanilla and TBC and got passed over for loot a lot. Then I swapped to tanking and now I still get passed over for loot but I don't really care. Since Cata, that has no longer been the case and I'm sorry if you're still stuck in that mind set. It took me a while as well to accept that DPS need to be able to do their job in order for us to meet enrage timers in order for me to play this game as I intend...to raid end game content. If your guild still has that Vanilla/TBC mentality, then gratz, you got a very rare guild.

Haste, as has been pointed out, does not increase survivability: it helps smooth out the heavy damage intake for slightly advanced tanks that can plan out and properly gauge holy power generation between threatening tank death boss abilities. If you want the math/theory on that, Theck has several very in-depth blog posts on it over at www.sacredduty.com. There is always a reason to have dodge/parry. An avoided attack is damage not taken, no matter how you want to look at it, that's survivability which is your number one reason for haste. As far as crit being the lowest stat to care about, I disagree. If you care about your DPS, then it should be higher than dodge/parry because it increases damage done.

Yes, I do tank in a 10 man environment, but there is very little difference between 10 and 25 man raiding. Sure, some fights are easier on the other difficulty and others are harder. I'm sorry if you think that a 10 man guild is not a real guild because you may think they have it easier. It's not any easier and in some ways, I find it difficult when people don't have a raid ready alt to try to help make some mechanic easier (such as having multiple warlocks for Helm of Command on Lei Shen for their gateways). Sure, any fight can be done with any raid comp, but some times, having multiples of a class just makes some things easier.

Yes, raid dps will go up if an equal gear ilvl is replaced between a tank or a dps...but well more often than not...the overall raid dps will go up if the DPS gets it over the tank because again, we're back to that new continuum of a tank can just just fine in suboptimal gear. And if you're on Lei Shen heroic, you should know this already.

Yes, I'm not denying that tank dps can be very good. Our BM destroyed everyone on Ra-den, more than doubling the number two dps. But the fact of the matter is, your way of thinking is a very rare thought in this day and age of raiding (speaking in terms of tanks getting gear over any one else first). As I have already stated, there was a time that was true, but it's not any longer.

I'm going to stop with this post and line of talking as this is a bit detrimental to the OP's question. It has been answered in 10:1 odds of 'let the dps get it first because it's overall better for the raid group' over the other arguments, and is quite well documented in that sense.

Tank gearing for survivability stopped being as much of a key factor in raid success with the switch to active mitigation and the gradual move to making fights hard through mechanics and not raw damage numbers. If a tank dies these days it's more often a screwup by tanks or dps taking too much damage and distracting the healers.

Fenrìr wrote:I have a problem with people who appear to only care about themselves and can't seem to grasp the concept that people care about their fellow guildmates and it's a far cry from me having a different opinion from you...it's the overly accepted view of almost every tank here. Sure, there are those people who care about tank dps...AFTER DPS's dps. Because again, we're back to the point of a tank can do their job in suboptimal gear as has been the case since what...T12? T11?.

Yes...you can do your job better with better gear...but so can a DPS and so can a healer. If you took offense or thought anything I said was a personal attack against you, then it must be true. But everything I said, can easily be applied to any single elitist tank who thinks that their dps is the sole reason for gear justification and while I did say 'you' quite a bit, it was not necessarily directed at you, even though you and I are having this conversation.

A tank getting gear over a DPS sort of stopped as Cata progressed. Sure, there was a time in which tanks and healers were the top two priorities on gear for tier pieces. Your main tank got geared out first over your off tank and your healers got the tier over the dps after the tanks because that was the time that gear did matter for a tank and you did not progress if you did not have a geared tank to stand up there and get beat on. I played a dps in Vanilla and TBC and got passed over for loot a lot. Then I swapped to tanking and now I still get passed over for loot but I don't really care. Since Cata, that has no longer been the case and I'm sorry if you're still stuck in that mind set. It took me a while as well to accept that DPS need to be able to do their job in order for us to meet enrage timers in order for me to play this game as I intend...to raid end game content. If your guild still has that Vanilla/TBC mentality, then gratz, you got a very rare guild.

Haste, as has been pointed out, does not increase survivability: it helps smooth out the heavy damage intake for slightly advanced tanks that can plan out and properly gauge holy power generation between threatening tank death boss abilities. If you want the math/theory on that, Theck has several very in-depth blog posts on it over at http://www.sacredduty.com. There is always a reason to have dodge/parry. An avoided attack is damage not taken, no matter how you want to look at it, that's survivability which is your number one reason for haste. As far as crit being the lowest stat to care about, I disagree. If you care about your DPS, then it should be higher than dodge/parry because it increases damage done.

Yes, I do tank in a 10 man environment, but there is very little difference between 10 and 25 man raiding. Sure, some fights are easier on the other difficulty and others are harder. I'm sorry if you think that a 10 man guild is not a real guild because you may think they have it easier. It's not any easier and in some ways, I find it difficult when people don't have a raid ready alt to try to help make some mechanic easier (such as having multiple warlocks for Helm of Command on Lei Shen for their gateways). Sure, any fight can be done with any raid comp, but some times, having multiples of a class just makes some things easier.

Yes, raid dps will go up if an equal gear ilvl is replaced between a tank or a dps...but well more often than not...the overall raid dps will go up if the DPS gets it over the tank because again, we're back to that new continuum of a tank can just just fine in suboptimal gear. And if you're on Lei Shen heroic, you should know this already.

Yes, I'm not denying that tank dps can be very good. Our BM destroyed everyone on Ra-den, more than doubling the number two dps. But the fact of the matter is, your way of thinking is a very rare thought in this day and age of raiding (speaking in terms of tanks getting gear over any one else first). As I have already stated, there was a time that was true, but it's not any longer.

I'm going to stop with this post and line of talking as this is a bit detrimental to the OP's question. It has been answered in 10:1 odds of 'let the dps get it first because it's overall better for the raid group' over the other arguments, and is quite well documented in that sense.

Your logic makes no sense. Sorry. No matter how many times you say "a tank can do their job in suboptimal gear" it still doesn't help your argument. ANYONE can do their job in suboptimal gear. I didn't say 10 man raiding was invalid in any way. My only reason for referencing 10 man vs 25 man is because I'm going to have more Vengeance than you on pretty much every fight (since the bosses hit harder). So maybe in your raid, you don't do as much/more damage than the DPS. But I do because I have a good roughly 100k vengeance on you.

It's really quite simple. The point of gear is to:

A) increase survivability B) increase DPS

A1) As long as a DPS has enough stamina to comfortably survive the things they can't avoid, that's pretty much irrelevant for them2) As a Prot Paladin gets more haste he has a much smoother damage curve, which drastically increases his survivability. In addition, all the damage they do is converted partially to healing, which provides a (at times substantial) raid survivability increase

B1) Since haste scales roughly linearly, the person who does the most damage on a given fight will gain more damage for an equivalent upgrade than someone who does less damage2) A Prot Paladin main tank on 25 man heroics does as much or more damage on all fights. There is not a single fight this tier where I end up at the bottom of the DPS charts, and many which I end up well ahead at the top. You can call these gimmicks, cheesing, or whatever you wish...but the fact of the matter is they get the boss/adds down faster and in some cases can trivialize DPS checks that would otherwise be much more tough.

And for the record...If we assume that spikes kill tanks and not total damage over the course of the entire fight (which we all assume otherwise Haste would be awful in the first place)... Haste DRASTICALLY increases survivability. Dodge/Parry are awful for this metric. Haste also makes Seal of Insight and Sacred Shield much MUCH stronger. There is literally no reason to have Dodge/Parry rather than Haste/Mastery/Hit/Expertise on your gear. The latter are better in every way that matters. If you could get rid of all your dodge and parry you should.

Saying you'd unilaterally give haste gear to DPS over Prot Paladins is akin to saying you'd give a 100k DPS guy a loot piece over your 200k DPS guy who both currently have the same item in that slot. It just doesn't make any sense.

Puredarkness wrote:Our guild is currently only raiding ToT normal as we are not a hard core guild.

Brokenone wrote:I raid 25 Heroics

That alone makes your advise useless, Brokenone. Take your fellow guildies, and go 10 man normal instead of 25 man heroic. See if you can still outDPS them.

Secondly, that you're doing more damage, does not automatically mean that giving the item to you will mean you'll do more extra damage than giving the item to a DPS. In a 25 man heroic guild vengeance alone defines that you will be competitive on DPS without so much as breaking a sweat.

Thirdly, even if your damage would increase the most from it, it doesn't mean that efficient damage would increase the most from it. As a tank, you're often attacking mobs that don't have any priority, just to keep threat on them, or keep your active mitigation up. DPS will (or at least should) always attack the targets that need to be burned down, so their DPS is more efficient than that of the tank.

Being top in DPS in 25H as a tank isn't skill. Having 500K AP sort of makes that easy. However, giving gear haste gear to DPS over a Prot Pal is a bit silly. So would giving haste gear to the Prot Pal over DPS. Both equally need it. Tanks however can get tank itemized gear easy. Either way, If its loot council, I'd say give it to the better player first (This is not always the tank, I've seen some poor tanks in high end guilds). If its DKP or some sort of bidding system then they both should have equal rights (The tank will generally be ahead here due to less competition on some slots).

However, Saying haste scales linearly so whoever does more damage will add more raid dps is a bit short sighted. A couple reasons would be:

1) Tank has to disengage that target sometimes.2) Tank swaps - if you go full bore the whole time, you're going to overthreat your cotank regardless of skill.3) Timing of ShotR - If you're spamming ShotR every 3 HoPo, you're doing it wrong and hurting your raid.4) Not All Abilities are effected by haste.5) Buffs or Dots - Example: Ret Pal - Enough Haste will allow more abilities to be cast before having to refresh Inquisition. Hence, they will get more than a linear gain when haste breaks the point to allow them to get an extra ability in before refreshing. Not much Prot Pals do that would benefit in a similar way.6) The other stat on the item - All the stats on a DPS item will increase DPS for a DPS class. We don't do more DPS from Mastery. We also need to push Expertise past soft cap and some of our abilities don't need it and therefore scales weaker past soft cap.7) Higher iLvl = more Strength - We scale like shit with Strength due to high AP from Vengeance. The extra Str and Socket Bonuses on higher iLvl Gear will do FAR more for a DPS then us.8) Fights with many adds Dodge/Parry probably does more for us than haste as we are not prone to spikes from many little hits.

If the item had haste and only haste, then yeah it would probably hold true that the higher damage prot would benefit more from it than the lower damage Ret.

Another thing to think about is that higher ilvl gear is needed on DPS on some cases. Some abilities are very well tuned for Health required to live through mechanics as DPS. Things like Ionization, or Dire Call can easily gibb a DPS without enough Stamina. Tanks will always live through these. There are plenty of these things where the extra health from ilvls makes a big difference in DPS living through some stuff, and dead DPS do NO DPS.

Last edited by Meyrinn on Wed Jul 03, 2013 10:22 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Oh and while Dodge and Parry have little to no value to us, there are cases where it can be worth a bit.

Try bat tanking. GC generated 62 extra Holy Power for me on that fight, which was almost as much at HotR did. Ji Kun Quills can be dodged and proc GC.No Amount of Haste will save you from a Berzerked melee swing on that .5% wipe, but a lucky Dodge/Parry will buy the ENTIRE RAID's DPS another second or 2 on the boss. Yes, this shit happens on first kills. 1% extra DPS for you, or 2 seconds extra DPS for the ENTIRE RAID.

And seriously, you can live with that Dodge/Parry Gear as long as you have enough health for a spike.

As for history of tanks being given tier first, that was for tier bonuses that were enough to make a difference. Also in the past tanks needed stamina to deal with bosses hitting for 70% of our health a swing.

Also, I've taken some items before the DPS, but usually I let the better Plate DPS take them (Yes, I ganked the first Heroic TF Spark of Zandalar). On top of that only Ret Pals and Frost DKs like haste items anyways.

hello again guys and THANK THANK YOU ALL VERY MUCH for ur input and advise.i asked some very specific and some general questions but i feel this thread has been derailed somewhat by certain ppl, while debating things is perfectly normal, name calling and sarcasm are uncalled for, plz keep control and try not to reduce urself to childish lvl when posting.ty all again for ur replies i only wish my guild would look at this thread and maybe try to understand my point of view

Going back to the OP's raid situation and the apparent policy being pushed in it, frankly if a guild right now is still working on normal modes, gear cannot possibly be the limiting factor in the raid's success anymore for any role. The marginal improvement by giving a haste/mastery/hit/exp piece to a dps DK over a tank is not remotely as important as the "learn to play" issues going on. Unless the raid has literally just started after a long hiatus, there is no way between normal mode drops, valor, LFR, and heroic scenarios that anyone is not at a sufficient gear level to realistically clear normal mode, so the biggest bang for buck in terms of performance is really tightening up and improving rotations and awareness. Nobody in your raid is being throttled by your wanting haste gear as a prot paladin.